School evacuated after trigger device discovered

Published 7:00 pm, Monday, September 16, 2002

A device found last Wednesday in a hallway at Magnolia High School was sophisticated enough to be used as a trigger for a bomb, said Montgomery County Precinct 5 constable David Hill.

The constable made the comment to reporters after a 1 p.m. press conference held at Magnolia Independent School District's Education Support Center. The object's discovery prompted school district officials to cancel classes at the school and send nearly 2,340 students home earlier that morning.

Hill said members of a Houston bomb squad said the device was typical of those used to trigger bombs and that information to build such devices are readily available on the Internet. He described the push-button device as being approximately an inch-and-a-half in length, triangular in shape and equipped with a visible battery and wires and what seemed to be a flash cell from a camera. Tape was used to hold everything in place.

"It was sophisticated enough to be used to trigger a bomb," he said. "Anyone can find plans to build things like that on the Internet. Although I don't know why anyone would want to do something like that. I don't know if I would be able to build it."

The device was found lying in a hallway of a classroom wing of the high school at 9:45 the morning of Sept. 11 by a custodian. Superintendent Michael Holland said students were evacuated to the school's stadium shortly after the discovery. School officials began sending students home at 10:45 a.m.

Holland was confident in the decision to close the school saying, "We are always going to err on the side of safety for our students and for our faculty.

"We felt like we had to get the students off of the campus, not knowing what the device was," he explained. "Again, the device was determined to be non-explosive. Possibly just a prank. Possibly something that was not even meant to be a prank. But again, we are not gonna' take chances any time it comes to student safety or faculty safety."

A variety of law enforcement officials were on the scene including Magnolia Police Department personnel, the constable's officers, members of the Magnolia Fire Department, Harris County constables, and the city of Houston's bomb squad. According to Hill, the first unit on the scene to detect if the device was an explosive was Magnolia's fire department, whose representatives advised the constable's office to call in a bomb sniffing dog.

"(Harris County Precinct 4) Constable Ron Hickman was gracious enough to send his animal up to take care of it in hurry for us," Hill said at the press conference. "Everything worked together very quickly this morning. The dog did not alert on it, indicating there was no explosive material nor had it been assembled in an area where explosives were."

Hill said Houston Police Department's bomb squad dismantled the device which triggered a flash. Law enforcement officials also conducted a search of the entire campus. The building was locked down until 8:50 a.m. Sept. 12. All high school extra curricular classes and practices were also canceled Sept. 11. Before school, early morning classes, called zero-period classes, were also canceled for the next day.

Holland told reporters that there were no suspects in the case and that it had yet to be determined if the object was intended to cause harm.

"It was not necessarily planted, not necessarily anything that someone was trying to cause harm or any type of situation like we had," he said. "Again, we just wanted to be sure and take a cautionary measure."

Hill said the evidence was in his possession and would undergo finger printing and trace evidence detection in trying to determine where the device may have come from. Until a suspect could be found and a motive behind the object's placement in the school's hallway can be determined, Hill said it was too early to figure out if any charges would be issued.

Hill said the discovery of the device on the anniversary of terror attacks on the United States gave more weight to the incident than if it had been found at another time.

He said the Magnolia school district staff works closely with law enforcement agencies, conducts routine safety drills, and has approximately six deputy constables on campuses during school hours. Safety drills, he added, are also conducted on a regular basis, "especially during the last two months for situations like this and other that might arise."

"Because of the date (September 11), it carries a whole lot more weight than it would at any other time," he told reporters. "The date has us all on extreme high alert and it (the device) will be processed entirely though every process that we can to identify any type of suspect."

The constable said anyone with information about the incident should contact his office at 281-356-2883 or any law enforcement agency.

"We need to find out what it is and why it was done," he said.

Officials claim the motive could have been a high school prank to dismiss class. If that proves to be the case in this instance, the mix of explosives and teenagers is nothing new.

According to an article in School Planning & Management magazine, a trade publication, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) has received more than 5,000 notifications of juvenile cases involving explosives during the past few years. And according to Steve Harris, a School Safety Project Manager with Georgia's emergency management agency, 65 actual explosive devices have been found on school property between 1998 and 2001.

Harris and his team routinely conduct safety training seminars for school administrators in Georgia as well as help school districts and emergency management agencies nationwide beef up strategies to make campuses safer. He said school district administration should be cautious of their evacuation procedures during bomb scares since students often pick up on departure routines, knowing future scare-tactics could garner students an extra day off. And as has happened in actual cases in the United States, school officials could end up sending their students to an evacuation site, such as a football field, where the actual bomb may have been planted.

Harris said bomb threats at high schools last Wednesday were mostly intended to scare rather than harm students and faculty.

"There was one threat at a high school here in Georgia (Sept. 11) and I was hoping local radio and television would not have picked up on it since students tend to try and copy-cat each other," he said. "There are a lot of nasty Web sites out there where individuals can get info on how to develop a bomb and trigger devices. The sites tell you where to get the component and where to place the bombs. It sounds like the district (Magnolia) handled the job pretty well. But I recommend that all districts vary their evacuation sites. We call what happened there a hoax."

Harris' department provides school officials with a checklist of 20 to 25 categories that can help campus administrators better respond, ascertain, and possibly trace bomb threats. His group has also begun helping college campuses in safety planning.

He also said members of his agency have conducted training sessions in Texas in conjunction with the state's own school safety program. Most of the information Harris and his team present is derived from the ATF's case files.

For phone-in threats, he suggests that school district personnel answer campus phones rather than students because adults are often more mature and adept at determining if bomb threats are real.

"There are a lot of things you can determine from the phone call alone," he explained. "The typical average call lasts under five seconds but there are often background noises that may help law enforcement determine where the call was made from. And the tone of a caller's voice can also help determine is it is a credible threat or not."

Harris also recommends school officials establish threat assessment teams made up of a school's liaison officer, administration, school counselors, and area law enforcement officers. And he said the team should be utilized du